The Chicken were the biggest band to come out of Uttoxeter since… well, since ever. Never had a band come out of Uttoxter. Until The Chicken. The Chicken were the first, and they were big, really big… well, big for Uttoxeter, anyway.

Their first LP (Long Player) sold 45 copies (as very few people in Uttoxeter had record players – friends and families were the main purchasers) and that pushed ‘Pecking in the Dirt’ well in to the top 10 (on the Uttoxeter ‘hot’ 100).

Their single release ‘Cluckin’ Like Crazy’ (in coloured vinyl) was a collector’s item (being a limited edition… of 10) and, so, barely scraped into the Uttoxeter singles chart (at no. 97, for one week only).

Well, a tour was mooted in the band, then they suggested to their management (Edith, Barry the Drummer’s mum) that a countrywide venue-fest would be just the thing to sell their new CD (Compact Disc , which format was an actual step into the twentieth century – their idea for cassettes was, however, still on the back-burner) this CD they had cleverly (to their minds) entitled ‘Hen Will I See You Again?’

Along with the band (Barry, drums; Tiger, guitar and vocals; Tez, Bass and muted vocals; and Limpet, lead guitar and mob choruses) there was Mozzer (Tiger’s Mum, the tour manager, and Mullet, the roadie.

It was Mullet that caused all the problems;

Mullet was a throwback to the early 80s, he was likely to be thrown back as far as the late 70s.

Mullet forgot the cables, the leads, the microphones, and all the strings for the guitars. Having left them in a custom-built logo-clad black gig crate that he had purloined from behind the brewery.

But, as Mullet claimed to be able to drive the old Bedford van that they had been ‘given’ by the Uttoxeter Twinning Comittee, in the vain hope that on their travels they might be able to agree a twinning contract with some far off paradise – such as Lichfield to the south.

However, a promised gig in ‘The Bright Lights’ a pub in Longdon (not London, as they had thought) failed to materialise as the landlord had double-booked the band with a group of ladies from the WI – and he wasn’t going to tell them that their coffee morning was cancelled.

To finish it all off, Mullet was arrested for speeding on the B5014 at Abbots Bromley – not normally an a treatable offence, Mullet was very puppy to the policeman and then proceeded to throw up over the policeman’s shiny black boots.

Without a driver, the band (and their entourage) has to get a bus home and have a long hard think about the band’s future. The only decision made, was, that Mullet was sacked.

Mullet, released sober a day later, was not that fussed as he had received a better offer from a WPC at the station. Less on that story is to follow.

Normally, if somebody is called ‘Phil’, their name is Philip (for a man) or Phyllis, Felicity, Philippa (for a woman), but Phil was different; she was named after her surname, which was Stamp – Stamp, Stamp-Collector, Philatelist, and so it got to Phil). This probably says more about Phil’s friends than it does about Phil herself.

Time changes things, Phil married an Astronaut, taking his name and becoming Mrs. Astronaut, in a short-lived marriage where her husband literally disappeared off of the face of the Earth – he’s probably orbiting Neptune by now – and Stamp, left behind, was no longer a part of the current name equation. ‘I am Anne Astronaut.’ although great as an ice- breaker (not Anne Ice-Breaker, that would be silly) was not actually physically true.

Anne, for that was Phil’s real name – as you might have gathered – now answered to Phil, occasionally Anne, or even Major Tom (some people are absolute comedians, in their own minds).

For the purposes of smoothness of this narrative, we shall stick to ‘Phil’ as an epithet.